Defaulted doctors: Hundreds fail to pay on loans
More than 300 health care providers who received Health Education Assistance Loans made no payments during 2008, despite having earned income that year, according to a new report from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services.
These 312 HEAL defaulters earned $13.4 million and owed $47.5 million on their loans in FY 2008. Ninety-eight of these defaulters (31 percent) earned $50,000 or more. These 98 defaulters were responsible for nearly $15 million of the $47.5 million owed.
The program, known by the acronym HEAL, provided federal insurance for educational loans made by private lenders to more than 156,000 graduate health professions students between 1978 and 1998. Loans were available to students in schools of medicine, osteopathy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, optometry, podiatry, public health, pharmacy, chiropractic, health administration or clinical psychology.
The names of borrowers who are in default on their loans are published online in a searchable database quarterly. Information available includes the borrower’s name, discipline, state, amount due, school and date of graduation or separation.
The site says it lists borrowers who:
- had one or more default claims paid by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS);
- been excluded from the Medicare program as a result of his or her HEAL default; and
- not had the Medicare exclusion stayed, or lifted, by the Office of Inspector General as a result of entering a settlement agreement.
The site says it was last updated in November 2009, so reporters will need to verify any information found on the site. But it could be a starting place for stories about local health care providers.
Credit crisis, IRS changes affect hospital finances (#ahcj09)
If ever there was a time to dig into your local hospital’s finances, this is it, Karl Stark told journalists Friday morning.
The Internal Revenue Service has made the first significant change to its 990 form in 30 years, providing more details about charity care and community benefits.
“And there are all these financial pressures coming down on hospitals this year,” said Stark, health and science editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. That may result in a new wave of closures and mergers.
“One of the issues that has been undercovered, in my opinion, is the effect of the credit meltdown on hospitals,” he said.
During a presentation at Health Journalism 2009, Stark provided advice on how to demystify the financial numbers.
Sandy Kleffman of the Contra Costa Times writes about some key points from Stark’s presentation.
Wis. nonprofit hospitals provide less charity care
David Wahlberg of the Wisconsin State Journal looked into the state’s nonprofit hospitals and found they “provided significantly less free health care and made more money than the national average in recent years.” Ninety-eight percent of Wisconsin’s hospitals are nonprofit, though the national average is closer to 59 percent, not including the 25 percent of hospitals that are run by the government and also tax-exempt.
Wahlberg focused on the budget surpluses and charity-care obligations of these nonprofit hospitals, reporting that the issues is “likely to take on more relevance this year in the state and the nation as unemployment soars and tax revenues plummet.”
Wahlberg reports: “The amounts of help provided by hospitals can vary greatly, according to an IRS survey of nonprofit hospitals released in 2007. Nearly half of the hospitals said they spent less than 3 percent of their budgets on charity care and bad debt; a fifth said they spent more than 10 percent of their budgets on those benefits.”
In part two of the series, Wahlberg looks at the question of whether a nonprofit hospital become too much like a business, focusing on St. Mary’s Hospital, which made a lot of money and gave relatively little charity care in recent years.
In part three, Wahlberg reports that some public officials are making nonprofit hospitals contribute more to their communities and that the troubled economy could expand this trend.
Holiday reading: Hospitals sue patients; team helps people die with dignity
Filed under: Government, Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
Hopefully, readers of Covering Health will have some time off over the holidays. Here are two fairly extensive projects that we recommend for reading if you have some spare time.
Nonprofit hospitals sue patients
In an eight-month investigation, reporters Fred Schulte and James Drew of The (Baltimore) Sun found that over the past five years some of Maryland’s 46 nonprofit hospitals have received millions of surplus dollars from the state’s unique payment system “even as they sued tens of thousands of patients over unpaid bills. Many of these suits have been filed against patients in the poorest areas of the state.”
The reporters found that hospitals have won at least $100 million in the past five years in debt collection suits, have added interest rates at twice the rate allowed for other debts and have placed 8,000 liens on patients’ homes. They also found that Maryland doesn’t closely monitor hospitals’ debt collection practices and doesn’t have standards to determine who qualifies for free or reduced-price care.
The investigation has prompted statements from the University of Maryland’s Medical System and Johns Hopkins.
End-of-life care
Lee Hancock of The Dallas Morning News explores palliative care, which combines “traditional medicine with pain relief, spiritual counseling, and practical advice” for patients near the end of their lives and their families.
The Baylor University Medical Center’s palliative care team has cared for 2,000 patients since its creation in 2003. “Hancock and photographer Sonya N. Hebert spent almost a year at Baylor, documenting some of the most difficult and meaningful moments in the life of any nurse, doctor, patient or family member.”
The online presentation includes engaging and emotional video of patients and family members, as well as a nurse and doctor on the palliative team who discuss what they do and the limits of medicine and technology.
Other elements of the package include a timeline illustrating how technology has extended life, questions to help people plan their medical wishes, first-person pieces from Hancock and Hebert and many resources.
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Join us in Atlanta
for Health Journalism 2012
Fellowship applications
due Feb. 27
New at HealthJournalism.org
- Data gives depth to investigation of patient safety
- What reporters should know about Alzheimer’s and related dementias
- Apply for fellowships to attend Health Journalism 2012
- AHCJ asks Supreme Court to permit broadcast of arguments in health reform case
- Tips for print, online journalists to embrace broadcast opportunities
- Numbers reveal how often, or how rarely, states check doctors’ disciplinary records
- How I did it: Falsified charts in nursing homes linked to patient care
- Access Denied: Looking at a lack of health care availability
- Transparency & medical errors: Public reporting of patient harm is a potent force
